Apart from a full-day set of interesting speeches, results, figures and panel discussions, the URBAN-WASTE Final Conference will also feature the third and last signing ceremony of the Charter of Commitments for Sustainable Material Resources Management and Circular Economy.

Nearly a year and a half after the Charter was launched in Nice, back in January 2018, as the project’s own initiative and campaign it will be unveiled to a broader public as it will reach its end together with the project’s lifetime itself. However, before the end is put on it, it will receive the last batch of signatories. The occasion chosen for this is the project’s final conference “Waste Management in Tourism. Does It Even Matter?” on 7 May which will be held in Brussels.

Eighteen different cities, regions, waste management authorities have signed it so far, as well as the European Parliament Intergroup Seas, Rivers, Islands & Coastal Areas, turning the Charter into a European wide cross-institutional campaign and initiative highlighting the need for making tourism more sustainable and adapting local waste management strategies to local and regional tourism patterns. The Charter so far stretches from Nicosia in the very east of the Mediterranean, over a number of Greek and other Mediterranean islands, all the way to the Azores in the middle of the Atlantic and it includes some of Europe’s main touristic destinations such as Tuscany, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Metropole Nice Cote d’Azur and many more signatories.

The Charter of Commitment, a significant milestone for the URBAN-WASTE project, represents a manifesto aimed at local and regional authorities who want to express their intentions to adapt their tourism sector to the given environmental capacities of the area of interest and further develop and enrich their tourism offer with eco-innovative strategies and measures which will turn tourism more sustainable and environmentally-friendly. This charter reflects local and regional authorities’ intentions to reducing waste generation by tourists and tourism service providers and improving waste management practices. Every tourist city and region or European public authority which is willing to commit to these values of sustainable tourism is invited to join this community and confirm their commitment by signing the Charter. Nonetheless, it also aims to reinforce the attractiveness of the territories as well as to foster local development by creating new green jobs and services locally. Furthermore, this Charter comes in the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, in the light of UN’s call for the contribution of the tourism sector to economic, social and environmental sustainability.

In March 2018 the Charter attracted attention of other European projects, namely BLUEISLANDS, an Interreg Mediterraean project which gathers numerous islands in the Mediterranean basin around the issue of marine litter and other waste management related issues these islands are facing. Therefore, as of March 2018, the Charter was renamed to URBAN-WASTE and BLUEISLANDS Charter of Commitments.

If you would like to join this group of forerunners in sustainable resource management and express your intentions in making tourism in your region more sustainable, get in touch with us and we will be happy to see you in Brussels. Read more about the Charter here.

In any case, even if you are not interested in the Charter, you can still attend the Conference by registering here.

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